Peltola's Senate lead grows to 4,250 as Alaska counts more ballots

Democrat Mary Peltola pulled further ahead of Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska's U.S. Senate race Tuesday, as the state added about 24,600 more ballots to its count.

Peltola now leads by 4,250 votes, up from about 2,500 on Monday, according to the Division of Elections' latest results. She has 48.8% to Sullivan's 47.0%. If no one tops 50% once all the ballots are in, the race will be decided in a ranked-choice count on Nov. 18.

Most of the new ballots were early votes. The rest were about 5,600 absentee ballots and 1,500 questioned ballots, cast by voters whose eligibility had to be confirmed first. Peltola won about 52% of the new Senate votes.

In the governor's race, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins' ticket has 49.7%, just short of the majority that would win the race outright without a ranked-choice count. On the ballots counted so far, he's 621 votes shy. Republican Bernadette Wilson's ticket is second with 28.7%.

Republican Rep. Nick Begich's lead over nonpartisan Bill Hill in the U.S. House race grew by about 800 votes, to about 19,100, after shrinking Monday. He has 48.8% to Hill's 40.9%, still short of a majority.

Tuesday's ballots didn't come evenly from around the state. The early votes came mostly from Anchorage, the Mat-Su, the Fairbanks area and the central Kenai Peninsula. The absentee ballots came from Juneau, the Fairbanks area, the central Kenai Peninsula and Southwest Alaska, and all of the questioned ballots came from the Mat-Su and the central Kenai Peninsula.

That mix is why Begich's lead grew even as Peltola's did. Begich won about 65% of the new House votes from the Mat-Su and about 61% from the central Kenai Peninsula, and his margins there outweighed Hill's margins everywhere else combined. Sullivan also did well in those two areas, but Peltola won enough of the new votes from Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks and Southwest Alaska to come out ahead. In Anchorage, she won about 60% of the new Senate votes, while Hill won about 49% of the new House votes.

Ballot Measure 2, which would repeal Alaska's open primaries and ranked-choice general elections, is still trailing. "No" leads 52.6% to 47.4%, and the gap grew to nearly 12,000 votes. If that holds, Alaska would keep its current system.

Ballot Measure 3, which would spell out in law that voters must be U.S. citizens, something Alaska already requires, has 69.1% "Yes." Supreme Court Justice Jude Pate has 59% "Yes" in his retention vote.

About 40,000 ballots the division has accepted aren't in the results yet, by Alaska News' count from the division's ballot reports: about 32,000 absentee ballots, 5,400 questioned ballots and 2,600 early votes. The division has rejected nearly 2,000 others, more than half of them questioned ballots. Absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day can still arrive through Friday, or through Nov. 18 from overseas.

About 16,500 of the uncounted ballots are from Anchorage, including Eagle River and Chugiak. About 9,000 are from Southeast Alaska and about 5,400 are from the Mat-Su. None of the absentee ballots from the North Slope and Northwest Arctic, Nome and the lower Yukon or the Interior outside Fairbanks are in the results yet, and almost none from Ketchikan, Sitka, Juneau's Mendenhall Valley, Kodiak or Homer. Questioned ballots from outside the Mat-Su and the central Kenai Peninsula haven't been counted. The Anchorage absentee ballots counted so far favor Peltola 67% to 31% and Hill 57% to 33%. In the Mat-Su, they favor Sullivan 55% to 41% and Begich 57% to 33%. The rest may not split the same way.

The state aims to certify the results Nov. 25.